The Great Ocean Road Tour

Jess had arranged for my birthday present a tour along the Great Ocean Road which was at the top of our lists of things to do in Melbourne. So last Saturday morning we were up and on the bus at 8:30am. We left the city traveling through old suburbs and little surf towns on the coast of Geelong. Our first stop was at Torquay for lamingtons, biscuits and coffee. The bus driver told us that this was the best beach in Australia but personally I don’t think he has ever left Victoria if he can make a comment like that! It was pretty windy and cold so Jess and I played on the swingset, took some photos and jumped back on the bus.

Our next stop off was at Bells Beach, where they filmed the movie “Point Break” and hold the oldest surf carnival every Easter. Bells Beach isn’t much of a beach as it is more cliff and rocks but that’s probably why it makes for a good surf carnival. The rain had stopped spitting and the sun came out for us so we were able to get a few nice photos.

After Bells Beach it was a long coastal drive on the official “Ocean Road” passing through Lorne and stopping for more photo opportunities along the way. We stopped off and had lunch at Apollo Bay and then we were off to “The 12 Apostles.” This is the main highlight of the trip which we were very excited to see as we had seen pictures of it on post cards and we were keen to take our own post card photos. They call it “The 12 Apostles” but there are only 9 standing now, 3 have collapsed since they named them and of course they can’t keep changing the names everytime one collapses.

The bus pulled over at a lookout point where we took some awesome photos. We then moved down the road some more to where I surprised Jess with an early Valentines Day present - a helicopter ride over “The 12 Apostles.” Jess got to sit in the front seat of the helicopter cause she was the lightest out of the 4 and I got a window seat in the back. The flight took us over the cliffs and dropped us down low to get some amazing photos. The helicopter ride was priceless and gave us a mind blowing view.

We moved down The Great Ocean Road some more where we stopped along the shipwreck coast at Loch Ard Gorge. This is where two people got washed up after a ship wreak 100’s of years ago and I think it’s where they filmed part of the movie “The Pirate Movie”.

We kept traveling down the road stopping at more lookouts and seeing more rock formations. We had a last chance stop for food at Port Campbell and then visited the remains of "London Bridge." London Bridge was once connected to the cliffs but a few years ago a group of people jumped the boundaries and walked out along the cliff having it collapse after them leaving them stranded on the arch out in the ocean. Pretty interesting story and pretty cool to see what they would have been stranded on for 4 hours until rescuers came!

At this point it was about 6 or 7pm so the tour ended and we traveled back to Melbourne after a long day of sight seeing.

Thanks Jess for a wonderful birthday present.

We've once again reached our photo upload limit but Jess has loaded all the pictures onto her Facebook which if you copy and the paste the address site below you should be able to see. The first link are the main Great Ocean Road photos and the second link are photos from the helicopter ride.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=39395&l=ae671&id=522015976
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=39463&l=bf5bc&id=522015976